'Pogroms need no reason, sir, none that can weather challenge, in any case. Difference in kind is the first recognition, the only one needed, in fact. Land, domination, pre-emptive attacks — all just excuses, mundane justifications that do nothing but disguise the simple distinction. They are not us. We are not them.'
'Did the Jaghut seek to reason with them, Corporal?'
'Many times, among those not thoroughly corrupted by power — the Tyrants — but you see, there was always an arrogance in the Jaghut, and it was a kind that could claw its way up your back when face to face. Each Jaghut's interest was with him or herself. Almost exclusively. They viewed the T'lan Imass no differently from the way they viewed ants underfoot, herds on the grasslands, or indeed the grass itself. Ubiquitous, a feature of the landscape. A powerful, emergent people, such as the T'lan Imass were, could not but be stung-'
'To the point of swearing a deathless vow?'
'I don't believe that, at first, the T'lan Imass realized how difficult the task of eradication would be. Jaghut were very different in another way — they did not flaunt their power. And many of their efforts in self-defence were … passive. Barriers of ice — glaciers — they swallowed the lands around them, even the seas, swallowed whole continents, making them impassable, unable to support the food the mortal Imass required.'
'So they created a ritual that would make them immortal-'
'Free to blow like the dust — and in the age of ice, there was plenty of dust.'
Duiker's gaze caught Coltaine standing near the edge of the trail. 'How far,' he asked the man beside him, 'until we leave this area of… of sorrow?'
'Two leagues, no more than that. Beyond are Nenoth's true grasslands, hills. . tribes, each one very protective of what little water they possess.'
'I think I had better speak with Coltaine.'
'Aye, sir.'
The Dry March, as it came to be called, was its own testament to sorrow. Three vast, powerful tribes awaited them, two of them, the Tregyn and the Bhilard, striking at the beleaguered column like vipers. With the third, situated at the very western edge of the plains — the Khundryl — there was no immediate contact, though it was felt that that would not last.
The pathetic herd accompanying the Chain of Dogs died on that march, animals simply collapsing, even as the Wickan cattle-dogs converged with fierce insistence that they rise — dead or no — and resume the journey. When butchered, these carcasses were little more than ropes of leathery flesh.
Starvation joined the terrible ravaging thirst, for the Wickans refused to slaughter their horses and attended them with eloquent fanaticism that no-one dared challenge. The warriors sacrificed of themselves to keep their mounts alive. One petition from Nethpara's Council, offering to purchase a hundred horses, was returned to the noble-born leader smeared in human excrement.
The twin vipers struck again and again, contesting every league, the attacks increasing in ferocity and frequency, until it was clear that a major clash approached, only days away.
In the column's wake followed Korbolo Dom's army, a force that had grown with the addition of forces from Tarxian and other coastal settlements, and was now at least five times the size of Coltaine's Seventh and his Wickan clans. The renegade commander's measured pursuit — leaving engagement to the wild plains tribes — was ominous in itself.
He would be there for the imminent battle, without doubt, and was content to wait until then.
The Chain of Dogs — its numbers swollen by new refugees fleeing Bylan — crawled on, coming within sight of what the maps indicated was the Nenoth Odhan's end, where hills rose in a wall aross the southern horizon. The trader track cut through the only substantial passage, a wide river valley between the Bylan'sh Hills to the east and the Saniphir Hills to the west, the track running for seven leagues, opening out on a plain that faced the ancient tel of Sanimon, then wrapped around it to encompass the Sanith Odhan and, beyond that, the Geleen Plain, the Dojal Odhan — and the city of Aren itself.
No relief army emerged from Sanimon Valley. A profound sense of isolation descended like a shroud on the train, even as the valley's flanking hills began to reveal, in the day's dying light, twin encampments, both vast, of tribesmen — the main forces of the Tregyn and the Bhilard.
Here, then, at the mouth of the ancient valley … here it would be.
'We're dying,' Lull muttered as he came up alongside the historian on his way to the briefing. 'And I don't mean just figuratively, old man. I lost eleven soldiers today. Throats swollen so bad with thirst they couldn't draw breath.' He waved at a fly buzzing his face. 'Hood's breath, I'm swimming in this armour — by the time we're done, we'll all look like T'lan Imass.'
'I can't say I appreciate the analogy, Captain.'
'Wasn't expecting you to.'
'Horse piss. That's what the Wickans are drinking these days.'
